The London Blitz was a time of incredible hardship for those Britons who endured it. But few today realize there was a second Blitz, the “Baby Blitz” during the latter days of the war. This blitz was not carried out by waves of Heinkel, Junker and Stuka bombers, but by mindless robots, the Vergeltungswaffen — vengeance weapons.
1942
From 1942, the German Air Force, The Luftwaffe, developed an unmanned aircraft, a flying bomb known as the V1. This was one of two weapons being developed, the other being a stratospheric rocket. This was to be the V” and Hitler hoped it would be used to destroy London, force the UK to surrender and enable him to concentrate his efforts on attacking the USSR.
V1 cut away diagram showing internal structure of the bomb.
The V1
The V-1 had a number of popular designations, primarily the buzz bomb or the doodlebug. It acquired these nicknames as the result of the very loud noise it made as it passed overhead. It has been described as a ticking sound, the sound of a freight train, or a motorcycle. The V1 engine could be heard for 10 miles (16 kilometers) and stopped when the device dropped its nose to the ground. Also, British double agents gave false reports indicating the V1s were overshooting their targets, and the Germans compensated by shortening their range, which led thousands to fall short of their target. In France, where most of the launch sites were situated, it was known as “La Casserole”, because it bubbled when it flew.
A reproduction of the original V1 engine.
Some 10,000 of these pulse jet-powered weapons were launched, but only 2,419 are known to have reached the London area. 4,261 were downed by fighters, anti-aircraft guns, and barrage balloons. Fast fighters like the Gloster Meteor and Hawker Tempest would attempt to flip over the V1 if they couldn’t shoot it down. Antwerp, Belgium was also hit by these bombs. 30,000 were manufactured in slave labor camps. 5,500 people were killed during the raids between June 1944 and March 1945.
Advanced weapons research had been going on in Germany since the 1930s, a result of the Versailles Treaty limitations on the size of the German Armed Forces. It did not, however, receive much funding or attention until midway through the war. Despite a spectacularly poor demonstration in May 1943 (the V-1 exploded within seconds of launching) Hitler was persuaded to continue the vengeance program. Launch failures were on the order of 39% at this time. In October 1943 successful demonstrations at Peenemunde convinced him that this weapon would win the war. By June of 1944 launch failures had been reduced to a remarkably low 5% and on June 16 the second Blitz was underway.
Doodlebugs
Doodlebugs were erratic, to say the least. Sometimes they did not even make it off the launch pad before they exploded, or they spun in the air, whizzing off in unexpected and unwelcome trajectories. Quite often they simply fell out of the sky, far short of any planned target. The 2500 or so that did make it to London had a very low “kill” rate, about one person to one bomb. However the property damage was enormous and many people were killed by falling masonry and flying glass. The only fortunate aspect of the doodlebugs was the shallow blast crater, which was rarely deep enough to hit water or gas mains. Fire was, therefore, not a major aspect of buzz bomb attacks. Terror, however, was. The horrendous noise produced by the doodlebugs was nearly as demoralizing as Hitler had hoped.
A cut away diagram of the V2 rocket.
Feared long-range V2 rockets
Meanwhile the V2 rocket was only a few months behind. Since 1943, two heavily-protected launch-pads had been under construction near St-Omer: the ‘blockhaus’ at Eperlecques and La Coupole. An elaborate supply network was in place, using concentration camp prisoners to assemble the mechanisms for this, the most sophisticated weapon of World War 2, in Germany, then take them by rail to France. The V2 rocket carried 2,000 lbs of explosive, and took only 5 minutes to reach its target at up to 3,500 mph. Unlike the V-1, the V-2′s speed and trajectory made it invulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and fighters, as it dropped from an altitude of 100–110 km (62–68 mi) at up to four times the speed of sound (appr. 3550 km/h). A plan was proposed whereby the missile would be detected by radar, its terminal trajectory calculated, and the area along that trajectory saturated by large-calibre anti-aircraft guns. The plan was dropped after operations research indicated that the likely number of malfunctioning artillery shells falling to the ground would do more damage than the V-2 itself.
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